Mitt Romney has taken a narrow national lead, tightened the gender gap and expanded his edge over President Barack Obama on who would best grow the economy.

A new POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Tracking Poll of 1,000 likely voters — taken from Sunday through Thursday of last week — shows Romney ahead of Obama by 2 percentage points, 49 percentage to 47 percent. That represents a 3-point swing in the GOP nominee’s direction from a week ago but is still within the margin of error. Obama led 49 percent to 48 percent the week before.

Romney has not led in the poll since the beginning of May.

Across the 10 states identified by POLITICO as competitive, Romney leads 50 percent to 48 percent.

Ed Morrisey at Hot Air reports that while the numbers are more realistic than some other polling samples, they still likely do not capture the enthusiasm gap in favor of Republicans.

Let’s take a look inside the numbers. The D/R/I for this poll is 35/31/33 for a D+4, a not-insupportable number that probably still understates Republican enthusiasm and turnout. Republicans comprised 32% of the electorate in 2008 and 35% of the electorate in 2010, so they’re unlikely to have a worse relative turnout this time than either of the past two elections. However, the non-white percentage in the sample (22%) looks a little thin compared to 2008 (26%), but close to 2010′s 23%. That’s something to keep in mind, as I suspect that the 2012 turnout will be somewhere between the two, and the undersample here may balance out the undersample of Republicans.

Two keys suggest Romney’s doing better than his toplines. First, he’s winning the gender gap. Romney gets a +10 among men, while Obama gets a +8 among women, for a +2 advantage for Romney. In 2008, Obama had a +14 gender gap advantage over John McCain. Obama wins single women, but is getting clobbered among married women, 42/55. Romney’s also leading among women without children overall, 50/46, suggesting that women who already know how to access birth control aren’t terribly concerned about it as an election issue.

The second key is age demographics. Obama has a 30-point lead among voters 34 years and younger, but that’s his only win. He and Romney tie among 35-44YOs at 48 each, but Romney has double digit leads among 45-64YOs (54/44) and seniors (58/38). Those last two demographics are the most likely to vote in the election.

This is yet another poll series showing Romney trending toward victory, and I suspect that the momentum is greater than the toplines suggest…

Support for President Obama among African-American voters is plummeting in North Carolina, likely a result of his ‘evolution’ from opposing gay marriage, to becoming the nation’s first gay President.

North Carolina, considered a crucial enough swing state for the Democrat party to hold their convention there, is leaning Romney right now, 48 to 46 percent according to a new poll.

But the stunning information coming out of this poll is that Obama only leads the African-American vote by a clip of 76 to 20 percent. Still a huge difference sure, but in 2008 Obama beat McCain for the African-American vote by a 95 to 5 percent margin. Just last month, Obama led 87 to 11 percent, so clearly blacks are abandoning Obama like the sinking Titanic his campaign has become.

To add to the misery expressed in this poll, it is not a conservative think tank poll, nor even a supposedly objective media poll – it is from the Democrat leaning Public Policy Polling.

President Barack Obama is rapidly losing support among African-American voters in North Carolina, a new poll out today from the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling shows.

The poll finds that Mitt Romney would get 20 percent of the African-American vote if the election were held today, compared with 76 percent for Obama. Overall, Romney has a 48 percent to 46 percent lead on Obama in the crucial swing state.

… All of Obama’s numbers with African-Americans are sliding. His approval rating is down from 86 percent to 77 percent. Romney’s favorability, meanwhile, has doubled from 9 percent to 18 percent.

… (Jim) Williams (polling analyst) added the obvious: If the results keep turning up like this, it would be “very bad news for him.”

We’ve come a long way since last month’s poll in which Mental Recession readers felt the economy would be in better hands if it were run by circus monkeys. Of course, we had to eliminate that option from this most recent poll, or the monkeys likely would have won again.

We asked – Which candidate is better equipped to handle the U.S. economy?

You said –

Barack Obama – 11%

Mitt Romney – 88%

New question – Who the hell are the 11%, and what alcoholic beverage are you overly consuming?

In the most lopsided poll we’ve ever conducted here at The Mental Recession, a vast majority of readers believe the economy has gotten worse since President Obama took office. It is clear, that our readers no longer believe the President has the right to continue blaming his predecessor for his economic failures. This is, after all, a man who said that if he can’t turn the economy around in three years, then he will be a one-term President.

Let’s hope that’s at least one prediction that will actually come true.

Follow the bouncing ball. Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum has now bounced to a 12-point lead over Mitt Romney in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Republican Primary Voters finds Santorum with 39% support to the former Massachusetts governor’s 27%. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich follows from a distance with 15% of the vote, and Texas Congressman Ron Paul runs last with 10%. Three percent (3%) like some other candidate in the race, and six percent (6%) are undecided.

Just over a week ago, it was Romney leading the pack with 34% after his win in the Florida Primary, followed by Gingrich 27%, Santorum 18% and Paul 11%. But then last week Santorum swept GOP caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota and a non-binding primary in Missouri as Gingrich continues to stumble in the race to be the conservative alternative to Romney.

I’m still trying to figure out how Romney won the CPAC straw poll this weekend. He is ‘severely’ behind Gingrich in conservative values, who in turn ranks behind Santorum.

… if you believe the results of a new Match.com survey, the truth isn’t just more subtle, it’s the opposite extreme. Men, it seems, are the ones who want to settle down. Bad sex is a deal-breaker for women. Gay men are the true romantics. And, apparently, it’s conservative Republicans who are getting the most from their bedroom rendezvous.

Republican Lead the Polls—In Orgasm

Yep, you heard that right. Republicans—and conservative Republicans, for that matter—reported the highest frequency of orgasm of all of the survey respondents, despite having the least amount of sex. More than half of those who identified as conservative Republicans said they reached climax almost every time they had sex, compared with just 40 percent of liberal Democrats. Sure, these answers are self-reported, but the survey was conducted anonymously online. What reason do they have to lie?